


Rock-a-bye Baby

by ransom191



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2018-01-13 03:43:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1211314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ransom191/pseuds/ransom191
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baby Milkovich and Aunt Mandy spend an evening out on the town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock-a-bye Baby

When Svetlana finally has the baby, they make her have it in the kitchen. No one wants to pay for her to go to the hospital.

She gets two of her hooker friends to come over and hold her hands and help her out, and somehow Mandy gets roped into it, just by virtue of her being a woman, so she kneels on the floor in the puddle of her brother’s wife’s bodily fluids, wipes Svetlana’s forehead with a wet washcloth, and tries not to imagine she’s the one pushing out a bastard child.

Something goes wrong, and Svetlana’s bleeding a shit ton more than she should be, at least as far as Mandy can tell. The hookers are all screaming in Russian and Mandy can’t understand a word they’re saying, she just keeps dutifully wiping Svetlana’s forehead, even as she’s convulsing under her fingertips.

And when Svetlana reaches up, grabs her arm and looks into her eyes and says “Take me to hospital. Please, Mandy. I don’t want to die.” Mandy looks away, pretends she didn’t hear those words, and feels nothing at all.

//

The baby gets born, one way or another. Svetlana hates her, won’t hold her or touch her. She doesn’t name her either, so Mandy just calls her Baby. She thinks Svetlana probably hates Baby because she’s all red and wrinkly and ugly looking, but that maybe Svetlana would hate her either way.

Mandy cleans the blood off the kitchen floor because the hookers have already left and Svetlana refuses to get out of bed and no one else in their house has ever cleaned anything before. It takes forever but she gets most of it out, and there, that can be her baby shower present. She wasn’t invited to the real one.

Mostly everyone’s miserable, except for Terry, who’s so happy it’s freaking everyone out. No one knows what’s going on. He’s not high, he’s not drunk, he’s just walking around the house smiling and laughing and smoking a fucking cigar.

Then Terry looks at Baby. Svetlana won’t look at her and Mickey looks at her like he wants to throw up, but Terry looks at her with hunger in his eyes and Mandy knows what’s going on, Mandy can read the writing on the walls.

//

They empty out a dresser drawer and fill it with blankets and that’s where Baby sleeps. Mandy offered to try and borrow a crib from Debbie Gallagher and her crazy daycare, but no one seemed interested, so she let it go.

Mandy waits until everyone’s asleep and then she sneaks into Mickey’s room and grabs Baby out of her drawer. She grabs Baby and she’s out of there, out the front door and down the front porch before she knows what she’s doing. Or, she does know, but she doesn’t want to admit it, even to herself.

The air is icy-cold and it cuts sharp against her skin but she didn’t remember to bring any blankets or anything for Baby so she wraps her up in her coat and keeps walking.

Her feet hitting the pavement feels like a heartbeat and she keeps walking.

Baby starts to cry but Mandy didn’t bring any bottles, either, so she sticks one of her fingers in Baby’s mouth and she quiets down.

She keeps walking, keeps walking.

//

Mandy had a plan but that plan only went as far as get Baby out of the house so after she accomplishes that, she starts to panic. It’s 3 am and where the fuck is she supposed to go with a baby, what the fuck is she supposed to do with a baby.

She ends up at the high school, in the courtyard where she and Ian would smoke when they ditched class together, where she and Lip would fuck when he finished his tests early.

It’s actually kind of peaceful, in a weird sort of way. She hates school, fucking hates it. She’s about to flunk out and she decided she would drop out before that happens, some twisted pride thing, so this might be one of the last times she’s here.

It’s not like she ever got anything out of this place but it was kind of nice to know she had the option, and now she doesn’t, because she was just too damn stupid, but here with Baby in her arms and knowing she’s not going to come back, she can almost feel the walls closing in on her.

Mandy wonders how long it’ll be before she’s taking kids of her own to school. It’s her destiny, right? Getting knocked up and popping out a bunch of good-for-nothing kids. Probably Terry’s, if she’s honest with herself. He’s been throwing away her birth control, even when she hides it. She thinks maybe another pregnancy is what he wants.

Maybe she’ll take Baby to school one day. That would be kind of nice. She doesn’t think Baby will be good-for-nothing.

Baby starts to cry, she smells like shit.

//

Mandy stands in front of the pharmacy with her face pressed against the glass. There’s no one inside, and she can see the diapers from the sidewalk. They’re right fucking there, she’s so fucking close, but she can’t get to them. Baby keeps crying.

She could break in, she knows, except not with Baby. There’s an emergency exit door around back that she could jimmy open without hardly thinking about it, but she’s got nothing to do with Baby. It’s not like she can set her on a bench and come back to her later. She’s just a baby.

She’s afraid that’s what Baby’s whole life is going to be, no one getting her what she needs, everyone just ignoring her as she cries. A woman walks by in nurse clothes, gives Mandy a dirty look. There’s a cop across the street, watching her, like he knows what she’s thinking.

Mandy thinks about begging someone for money, then she realizes that even if she had money, no stores were open anyway.

Then she realizes she’s never going to be able to take care of Baby.

Finally, Mandy lays Baby down on a bench and pulls her dirty diaper off. She tosses it in a trashcan. There’s no new diaper to put on, she just bundles Baby back up and holds her close to her chest. She hurries away before the cop comes over to see what’s going on.

//

If she closes her eyes, Mandy can feel Terry’s crusty hands moving all over her. She can feel his fingernails scratching at her skin and his heavy breath on her face and his weight holding her down. She can feel him inside of her, burning like fire, burning like it will never stop. Sometimes she thinks it never has.

Mandy thinks about all of this as she walks along side the train tracks.

She could put Baby on the train tracks, and it would be over in a second. She could lay her down nice and gentle and it would be over before Baby even knew what was happening.

And Mandy looks down at Baby and earlier, she thought she was ugly, but now, in the moonlight, she looks to soft and so pure and so beautiful and it makes Mandy want to cry to think of her skin marred with a thousand little scars, a map of where Terry’s hands have been.

It makes Mandy crazy to think about Baby lying awake at night wondering what just happened, what she did to make it happen.

It makes Mandy sick to think about Baby with a baby of her own someday, a baby whose father she can’t name because she’s too humiliated to admit the truth.

And she can’t take care of Baby, she can’t give her a home, but she could do this. She could be brave and she could be strong and she could stop it before it ever happened.

She would sing Baby a lullaby until the train comes, Mandy decides, and from then on, every time she passed that spot, she would say a prayer.

She doesn’t really know how to do either, but she would try.

She could do it. She touches the metal with her hand, it’s cold against her skin.

She could do it.

When the train goes by, it’s so loud that the noise makes Baby start to cry all over again.

//

In the end, she just takes Baby back home.

She can’t even save herself, what the fuck ever made her think she could save someone else?


End file.
